EVEN EASIER Easy Meat Sauce for Spaghetti or Lasagna

I took a challenging recipe that nobody in their right mind would ever make, and made it shorter, faster and easier. And now, with this paired-down recipe, you can make authentic homemade mole in just five simple steps! (Okay maybe you’ll never make it but go ahead and pin it for Christmas Eve dinner.)

And I did the same thing with flan. Flan can be a challenge to make, but with this easier recipe, now you can make authentic homemade flan with just four ingredients! (Go ahead and pin that one for Christmas Eve dinner, too. You never know.)

So you get the idea. I like making recipes quicker, simpler, easier. All good, right? Well let me ask you this: Is it weird that I take my own recipes and make them easier? (I’m all, “Geez, who the heck wrote this encyclopedia of a recipe!? . . . Oh yeah, I did.”)

I’ve done this with my lemon-dill sauce. It actually started as lemon-tarragon sauce, but tarragon was waaaaay too hard to find sometimes, so I switched it to dill and cut out about half of the ingredients (lemon zest? who has time for that?), and now it’s my go-to five-minute sauce for fish and chicken.

And now I’ve done the same thing with spaghetti sauce. It started as a fairly simple recipe in the first place (I even call it Super Simple Meat Sauce for Spaghetti or Lasagna) but then we got a big dog and a second cat and two kids in school and a part-time job, and all of a sudden that “super simple recipe” was not quite as simple as I remembered. For one, I never have Italian sausage or bison in my fridge. So those two ingredients had to go. And how ’bout that extra can of seasoned tomato sauce? Buh-bye. So here’s the new version … my EVEN EASIER Easy Meat Sauce for Spaghetti or Lasagna. Hope you enjoy!

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the garlic; sauté until fragrant. Add the beef in the still-hot Dutch oven. Using a wooden spoon, stir and chop up the meat into small bits as it cooks. Cook meat over medium to medium-high heat until nicely browned.